An artificial surface suitable for contact by a human foot or other body part tends to lack the flexibility of a natural turf or other desired surface. Any activity or occupation, which requires long periods of standing or moving on foot, is enhanced by a reasonable flexibility of the surface. This reasonable flexibility can add to a person's reasonable endurance and minimize injury.
An artificial surface usually lacks the flexibility of a grass covered surface. This lack of flexibility can cause injury even if the contact with the surface is merely walking or standing.
Artificial surfaces, commonly known as artificial turf, are routinely used for playing surfaces on baseball field, a football field, or another playing surface. One difficulty in this artificial turf occurs because of the surface on which the turf must be mounted. This surface lacks the resiliency of grass and can many times cause injury to the players.
Typical injuries caused by an artificial surface occur to a knee or to a toe. There is even a vernacularly named disease call “turf toe”, which refers to a big toe injury caused by artificial turf. What is desired is the provision of a surface with the required durability, while adding thereto the necessary flexibility for the surface in order to avoid the damage caused to knees or toes, or to an athlete in general.
Compensating for the lack of water by an artificial turf surface is difficult. Each artificial surface is different. Differences include variances in the length and the terrain.
While an artificial surface does not soak, or absorb water, as a grass surface does, it is sometimes difficult to remove the water from the surface. Pushing the water off of the surface is time consuming and difficult. Clearly, a simpler method of removing water from the surface is desired.
There have been attempts to solve some of the problems associated with artificial surfaces. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,618,131 entitled “Modified artificial surface and method and apparatus of making the same,” that issued to Weber teaches “an artificial surface having at least one compartment with a filler therein has the filler held in position by a vacuum.” However, these attempts do not solve all of the problems associated with artificial surfaces.
This it is desirable to provide an artificial surface that solved some of the problems described above.